FRESH CREAMER

Philip Creamer chased his classic-rock dreams
from Texas to Tennessee, and found a home in East
Nashville that’s just right

By Steve Morley

If you’ve ever known a born-and-bred Texan, you know that leaving
Texas isn’t something to be taken lightly. Dallas-born Philip Creamer
admits he’s been irreversibly marked with “the everything’s-bigger-
in-Texas mentality,” but ultimately, he didn’t find his home state
sufficiently expansive to accommodate the whole of his ’60s- and
’70s-influenced pop-rock aspirations.
“I’m kind of a hippie and I’m just a huge fan of rock ’n’ roll and
power pop,” Creamer says. “My music, you know, I don’t think was ever
really going to find its perfect home in North Texas.”
Creamer moved from Dallas to Nashville’s Inglewood neighborhood
in September of 2015, along with his wife, Sam, and 1-year-old
son. He’d spent the previous eight years with Dovetail, a band he
formed in 2008 with his brother, Daniel, and close friends from the Dallas-Fort Worth
music scene. Dovetail garnered popularity outside the Big D and in 2012, released an
album of vintage-flavored contemporary rock, cowritten by the Creamer brothers. Two
of its songs took Grand Prize honors in the John Lennon Songwriting Contest, but
career-wise, the Big Payoff remained elusive.
“Things were just not hitting at the rate that I wanted them to,” Creamer says, looking
back on his family’s decision to relocate to Music City.
Back in DFW, Dovetail’s remaining members morphed profitably into The Texas
Gentlemen, a cadre of crack musicians that has backed Kris Kristofferson, among other
notables. It’s a curious dichotomy — though clearly capable of typically Texas-centric
music-making, Creamer’s bandmates were also crucial to bringing Dovetail’s clean,
melodic pop-rock sound to life.
Meanwhile, Creamer was pressing into his decidedly non-rootsy, Anglo-rock-inspired
vision in an Americana-saturated music town 650-odd miles to the northeast. Eager to
expand, not abandon his musical vision, he held to his hope that he would find kindred
musical spirits in his adopted hometown — musicians with whom he could develop the
kind of easy, intuitive rapport he enjoyed with Dovetail.
During his first few months in Nashville, Creamer began by employing the most
practical tool he owned: a more than 3 1/2-octave range, which he’d begun developing as
a teenager, learning to sing along with the fluid, muscular voices of such marquee-toppers
as Stevie Wonder and Freddie Mercury. Along with building a client base as a
private vocal coach, Creamer found an especially fitting platform as a guest vocalist on
classic-rock tribute shows, with such stalwart Nashville bands as The Long Players and
Sons of Zevon.
With The Tennessee Help, which he founded with bassist Chase McGillis and Truth
& Salvage Co. singer/guitarist Tim Jones, Creamer staged half a dozen benefit shows at
The Basement East, covering the likes of Van Morrison and Joe Cocker. For many local
players, classic rock is a welcome indulgence, enjoyed between bread-and-butter gigs. For
34-year-old Creamer, it’s remained a primary draw, tracing back to when he and a buddy
first discovered The Beatles at age 12, and began to unravel the history of classic rock via
homemade cassette recordings of a Dallas FM station.
While he’s conversant with contemporary rock, Creamer believes that “when you start
expounding on ’60s and ’70s pop-rock, everything’s there that you need and more.”
Creamer significantly upped his Nashville
rock-sector credibility in December of 2016,
after being asked by Black Crowes drummer
Steve Gorman to handle vocals for the Misty
Marathon Hop, an all-star night of Led Zep
covers sponsored by Lightning 100. With his
elastic vocal range and seasoned stage presence,
Creamer was clearly the man for the job, and
people took notice.
“That was a big, big thing for me,” he says.
“That night I basically met and worked with
dozens of musicians I look up to, and love.”
One of Creamer’s most ardent supporters:
guitarist and fellow East Nashvillian Audley
Freed, who has tapped the singer to appear
on his Audley Freed & Friends classic-rock
covers shows.
“There aren’t many frontmen/singers — especially
of his caliber — around anywhere, so
to have him in the neighborhood is fantastic,”
says Freed, whose resume includes stints with
Sheryl Crow, the Black Crowes, and a slew
of others. “Obviously there’s no shortage of
amazing musicians all over Nashville, but I’m
not sure there’s anyone who does what Philip
does: that classic sort of flamboyant rock ’n’
roll frontman that understands the music on a
deeper level and can sell it.”
“He’s got real classic-rock crooner pipes,”
adds Wilco’s Pat Sansone. “Yes, with great
technique, but also with so much depth
and musicality.”
Sansone and Freed first heard Creamer at
the Family Wash in March of 2016, fronting
the then-dissolving Dovetail. The Dallas crew
came up to rejoin their frontman after Joe
Firstman — leader of East Nashville band
Cordovas, and a musically simpatico friend —
learned that Creamer had moved to Nashville,
and offered some valuable local exposure opening
for his band. Sansone came to sit in with
the headliner, but ended up being knocked out
by the unknown opening act.
“Audley and I were loving it,” Sansone recalls.
“The band was tight, amazing harmonies,
some sophisticated musical elements, and the
tunes were drawing from a lot of classic rock
and pop that we both love.”
Sansone introduced himself to Creamer
after the show, as did Freed. Plans were later
made to begin work on an album, with Sansone
producing and Freed on guitars. That Family
Wash encounter, Creamer says, was “kind of
a quintessential Nashville moment. I met the
two guys who would become my collaborators,
mentors, friends, and biggest advocates that
night. Those musicians reaching out and bringing
me into their respective worlds has made a
massive impact on my career, and more so my
development and place on the scene.”
Creamer spent nearly two years methodically
assembling his solo debut, which will hit
the streets in vinyl form on Sept. 21. Titled
Creamer, it will feature a dozen tracks recorded
to two-inch analog tape at Nashville’s Club
Roar, produced by Sansone and Josh Shapera.
Some of the songs are holdovers from the
Dovetail days, with writing input from brother
Daniel; others came together solo, here in
Tennessee. Throughout, the album’s tracks
create an introspective mood as often as not,
employing an intricacy and restraint more in
keeping with Creamer’s soft-rock and lush
pop-rock sides, at times evoking glimpses of
ELO and Queen, Creamer’s reigning influence.
The album’s more rock-leaning lead-off
single, “Drugs No More,” is one of his most
recent compositions, with a direct message
Creamer says reflects the fearlessness he’s
gained from soaking up “the spirit, the energy,
the focused direction that all these really great
Nashville artists have.
“Here, I’m brushing shoulders with so many
artists who are very clear what their vision is,”
he explains, “and that has rubbed off on me.”
Creamer’s hope of expanding his original musical base has come to pass, too: Along with
Audley Freed and Ontario-based drummer
Dave King (who anchors the touring lineup
that’ll soon hit the road), the album features
Dovetail mates Scott Lee on bass and Daniel
Creamer on a variety of analog keyboards.
The last three years in Nashville have indeed
been a time of growing: In addition to building
his team of collaborators, he and Samantha
have produced two additional Creamers — the
first on either side of his family to be born
on non-Lone Star turf. The most stalwart of
Texans might consider their bi-state brood a
blended family, and yet Creamer’s transplanted
Texas-Tennessee life is fulfilling the artist’s
dream.
Creamer and his band will debut material
from the new album here at home, as part of
September’s AmericanaFest, during a showcase
at the 5 Spot — a twist that Sansone
admits might seem a little like a contradiction.
“What Philip does as a writer and singer is a
little outside of the general vibe. It doesn’t have
a blatantly Americana foundation,” he says,
“which I think sets him apart and makes him
a special part of the current Nashville scene.”
It was those artistic idiosyncrasies, after all,
that led Creamer to Tennessee, where he found
a rough-hewn, roots-centered movement in
full bloom. Still, the big patchwork quilt comprising
the city’s red-dirt-flecked Americana
scene has proven to be an accommodating
one. It may not be the Big D, but in Nashville,
Creamer has found a home that’s just the right
size.